The airman was identified as Aaron Bushnell, age 25, from San Antonio Texas. Bushnell joined the air force in 2020 and ended up a cyber defense specialist at a base near San Antonio. He was also a active socialist and would distribute food to homeless people and more.
The night before the protest that ended his life, he told a friend that he has discovered US troops were fighting in Gaza tunnels. He said, “That’s it us soldiers participating in the kings” and also said that “the US military was involved in the genocides going on in Palestine.” He felt bad because he was in the army and our troops were involved in the genocides. The next day, he said he was about to engage in an extreme act of protest against an act of genocide against the Palestinian people. He started to dump liquid from a water bottle over his head and then he proceeded to light himself on fire. While he was burning, he repeatedly shouted “Free Palestine”, and he burned for about a minute before he collapsed to the ground. A U.S secret service officer then began to extinguish the fire. Bushnell was taken to a nearby hospital with life threatening injuries and sadly passed away a few hours later. Officer Lee Lupe, a spokesperson for the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department, confirmed the death. The latest incident comes amid ongoing pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli protests in the United States following Hamas’s Oct. 7 cross-border attack on Israel, where around 1,200 Israelis were killed and 253 hostages were seized. Aaron Bushnell wasn’t the first person to commit this horrendous act of protesting though, a woman in December, also set herself on fire outside the Israeli Consulate in Atlanta.
